Maryland

In order to administer any kind of justice, our court system requires two parties participating in a lawsuit. When that doesn’t happen, plaintiffs generally prevail, even if they haven’t produced any proof of their claims. Ordinarily, a default is a bad thing for a plaintiff, because there is little or no chance of getting paid.

Defaults are just what debt buyers want, though, because they have thousands of lawsuits to file and little or no proof in any of them. And debt buyers are willing and able to pursue collections on a massive scale—garnishing salaries and bank accounts to satisfy all those default judgments. Essentially, the debt buyer industry has found a loophole in the court system—a way to exploit the default rules.

That’s why courts need to raise the bar for debt buyers. When the usual result of a debt buyer lawsuit is a deprivation of property, courts should endeavor to make sure it doesn’t happen unless the debt buyer has shown some right to that property.

In Maryland, the Court of Appeals just approved rules that will prevent debt buyers from getting a default judgment with nothing more than a name and a dollar amount. From now on, ” target=”_blank”>debt buyers will actually have to provide proof of ownership and indebtedness.

This may sound like common sense, but Maryland is—unfortunately—being a bit revolutionary, here. In most states, a debt buyer does the equivalent of writing a number and a name on a napkin, and walks away with the right to garnish wages and bank accounts.

I’m having fun searching for “landlord” on YouTube lately. There are a ton of great videos of terrible landlords. Cameras are a terrific tool to use in a landlord-tenant dispute.

This video, however, shows what happens when a liberal eviction law is in place. In Maryland, a landlord may evict a tenant for even one day of late rent. Minnesota, thankfully, is not quite so strict, and requires notice, at least, before an eviction can be filed.